American beefcake actor Channing Tatum got more than he bargained for when Steven Soderbergh cast him as an action spy in the thriller Haywire. Their collaboration, and some beers one day after work, also led to the forthcoming movie Magic Mike. Set for a probable June release, Magic Mike is a full monty comedy about Tatum's own experiences as a teenaged stripper.

After the physical rigours of making Haywire, getting down-and-dirty for Magic Mike turned out to be weird, awkward and a total blast. "It was so much fun," Tatum reveals during his Haywire interviews. "We all had a barrel of laughs!"

Despite threats to retire, Soderbergh directed Magic Mike as his follow-up to Haywire. Soderbergh was also the inspiration for Tatum to enlist his business partner, Reid Carolin, to write the screenplay. It is based on Tatum's anecdotes about eight months of stripping in a Tampa nightclub at the close of the 1990s, when Tatum was 18 going on 19. His stage name was Chan Crawford, although the character is now named Mike Martingano. This was before Tatum briefly became a fashion model, danced in the Ricky Martin music video She Bangs, and eventually landed his first acting gig on CSI: Miami in 2004.

"Weird!" the 31-year-old, Alabama-born Tatum says of returning to his teenaged years to star in Magic Mike. "It was really weird. It wasn't exactly as comfortable as I had remembered it. I think I was 19 and kind of a little dumb and crazy. A lot crazier than I am now."

Magic Mike was shot in Tampa and Tatum found himself walking the same streets he frequented as a stripper. He was intrigued, he says, "being in the same club where I was probably really intoxicated in. Walking the same weird little alleys and doing it sober this time was fun."

As for getting naked for some scenes, Tatum was surprised how difficult it was initially, despite his ease of showing off his athletic body when he was a teen. "It was kind of weird getting back on the horse and doing it again."

There was also what he calls "a healthy competition" among the men doing the full monty for the shoot. It reminded Tatum of what it was like, both physically and emotionally, when it did it for real.

"It's really, really obviously 'naked' to walk out in front of a group of girls naked. You get real reactions from them. When you walk out and take it all off, you want to get a good reaction. And it's really hard to be sexy when you're naked as a guy. Girls can just walk and be hot. And guys ... (he pauses to grin) ... you don't really want to move a lot. Keep it cool. It was a very eye-opening experience."

While he has been chatting up his stripper movie for several years -- and once considered Nicolas Winding Refn (now of Drive fame) to direct -- Tatum did not get serious about the project until he was prodded by Soderbergh during Haywire.

"He hires people he wants to hire and he expects you to bringing something that he is not expecting, and he trusts that your judgments are correct," Tatum says of the filmmaker. "From that, it kind of liberated me and we were sitting over a beer and I told him I was a stripper. He said: 'That would make a great movie.' I was like: 'I want to make a movie out of it.' And he said: 'You should write it.' "

But Soderbergh persisted, eventually persuading Tatum to enlist Reid as the screenwriter. Soderbergh and Tatum then co-financed the low-budget project and the rest is ... well, we will have to wait and see if they make a little history together.